Purina will leverage NIQ ConnectAI’s AI-powered insights platform to enhance consumer intelligence, accelerate decision-making, and drive data-informed growth across its business.
NielsenIQ, a global leader in consumer intelligence, today announced that Purina has become the first publicly announced customer in its ConnectAI founding program. NIQ has previously launched the program with five global companies across the personal care, pet care, beauty, and beverage industries, and more customer announcements and case studies are expected as the partnerships continue.
Through ConnectAI, NIQ’s frontline deployment engineers and data scientists are working deep within Purina’s technology environment to explore how NIQ’s consumer and market intelligence can support daily AI-enabled workflows and help teams gain relevant insights more efficiently.
Brian Donovan of Purina’s Strategy & Insights division stated, “To understand pet owners’ needs, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of evolving consumer behavior, shopping habits, and category trends. Purina is collaborating with NIQ to explore how their trusted intelligence can be integrated into Purina’s daily AI-enabled workflows, helping our teams acquire relevant consumer insights more efficiently and make informed decisions with greater confidence.”
ConnectAI is an early product of NIQ’s “Intelligence-Driven AI” strategy and serves as NIQ’s platform and builder model for transforming consumer intelligence into decision-making. It brings NIQ’s proprietary data, models, product content, analytics architecture, and business context into the customer’s own AI environment, where they can be combined with the customer’s data and systems to support agents and workflows around recurring business decisions.
ConnectAI complements NIQ’s tailored AI application and business intelligence strategy, providing customers with multiple ways to use NIQ intelligence: through NIQ products, in the customer’s own technology environment, or through jointly developed workflows.
Jim Peck, Chairman and CEO of NIQ, stated, “Organizations are moving beyond the experimental phase of AI and focusing on how to make AI work in a scalable, governed, and effective way in real-world business environments. ConnectAI allows customers to gain deeper, more detailed intelligence unique to NIQ while protecting our proprietary data and models. It enables us to support the AI projects that customers are already building in a repeatable, secure, and continuously value-creating manner.”
Each ConnectAI founding partnership includes a dedicated team of frontline deployment engineers and data scientists who work alongside the client to configure agents and decision-making workflows around the organization’s operations, priorities, systems, and success metrics. This model aims to create repeatable platform services that can scale across the organization while adapting to each client’s environment and critical workflows.
Irina Stoian, Chief AI Business Officer at NIQ, stated, “The real key difference over the next decade isn’t between companies that have AI and those that don’t. Everyone will have AI. The real difference lies between companies whose AI operates on real, reliable consumer and market data, and those whose AI is just guesswork. We are selecting a small number of clients to work with us, with the support of our engineers, to build this foundation within their operations. For those companies that act now, the advantages will continue to accumulate.”
As businesses seek to translate their AI investments into commercial value, demand for ConnectAI is growing in the FMCG, technology, and durable goods industries. NIQ plans to add more founding clients, including retailers, in the next phase of this initiative. Brands and retailers interested in working directly with NIQ’s frontline deployment engineering and data science teams to build AI-enabled decision-making workflows can express their interest here .
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ConnectAI?
ConnectAI is NIQ’s platform and collaborative delivery model for integrating NIQ’s data, models, and business context into customers’ AI environments. It combines technical access with dedicated engineering and data science support to build workflows around specific business decisions.
How does ConnectAI differ from existing NIQ products?
Existing NIQ applications deliver intelligence through a specially built NIQ experience. ConnectAI allows customers to use NIQ intelligence in their own AI systems, applications, and workflows. These two approaches complement each other, allowing customers to access NIQ capabilities in a way that best suits their business.
What are our clients building?
Every collaboration is tailored to the client. Potential use cases include demand forecasting, competitive intelligence, retail and shelf selection decisions, consumer and category trend detection, growth planning, and gaining insights across the broader organization.
What does the NIQ build team do?
NIQ assigns engineers and data scientists to work alongside clients’ technology, data, and business teams. Together, they configure data connectivity, business context, and AI-enabled workflows around the organization’s systems, priorities, and success metrics.
Is ConnectAI open to all potential customers?
ConnectAI is currently being developed through its first batch of founding partners. NIQ expects the insights gained from these partnerships to inform the program’s continued development and future expansion.
How does ConnectAI fit into NIQ’s broader AI strategy?
ConnectAI is an early product in NIQ’s “Intelligence-Driven AI” strategic pillar. NIQ’s broader strategy also includes custom AI applications for business workflows and business intelligence for the emerging AI-driven shopping ecosystem.
About NIQ
NielsenIQ (NYSE: NIQ) is a leading consumer intelligence company dedicated to providing the most comprehensive and reliable insights into consumer buying behavior and uncovering new growth avenues. Leveraging an unparalleled global data footprint, granular consumer and retail metrics, and decades of AI modeling expertise, NIQ builds decision-making systems that help businesses transform complex data into effective action.
NIQ operates in more than 90 countries, covering approximately 82% of the global population and over $7.4 trillion in global consumer spending. Through its cloud platform, advanced analytics, and AI-driven insights, NIQ delivers The Full View™, helping brands and retailers understand consumer buying behavior, why they buy, and what happens next.
